


going in and out of the headlights

by johniaurens



Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: M/M, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-20
Updated: 2017-01-24
Packaged: 2018-09-18 16:36:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 2,812
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9393899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/johniaurens/pseuds/johniaurens
Summary: lams poetry collection





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> also on my tumblr [here](http://laflams.tumblr.com/tagged/lams%20poem)
> 
> warnings for individual poems in the chapter notes. title's from for blue skies by strays don't sleep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter has: major character death, vague suicidal stuff

IN EVERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO it ends like this: I sit in silence and wait for your letters. my heart rots and your letters never arrive. you die and I’m never the same again. 

close your eyes and imagine this: the low hum of the wind. the mechanical failure of our hearts. blood, and then tears, and then our breath, stuck in our throats. I wanted to give you a story that would carry us through the night and into the light again. I wanted our bodies to stay heavy and our souls connected to our flesh. you said; there’s just too much to do. 

I said _dear J, all I want is for us to stay alive._

you said _hah. I wish._

in this scene I’m eating oranges and you’re writing a letter we both know you’ll never send. in this scene I’m spitting out the seeds and you’re writing me a letter I’ll never get to read. in this scene we are in the same room and in a few months you’ll be dead. 

I want to skip this part. this room is too small for me, you, and death.

DEAR JOHN THERE ARE hundreds of different types of wars and I wanted to get to know them all as intimately as I knew the war of having you undressed next to me when I wasn’t allowed to touch you. I wanted to conquer the vast landscapes of your body and rule them like a lonely king. you told me not to look but I did anyway because I was hungry for something more than what I already had. I was hungry for you. 

I wanted to swallow you whole so you couldn’t escape. I wanted you to find peace inside of me. I wanted your arms around me. I didn’t want to be fixed. I wanted this hunger. I’m selfish like that. 

if that makes me a monster then so be it. 

THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF WARS and you wanted to live through all of them just to die at the end of the last one. you said that wars never end. you said you’re tired. here’s a riddle for you. if the wars never end and you die at the end of the last one how do you know the war you’re fighting is the last one? how do you know when to surrender? answer: you don’t. you don’t you don’t you don’t. 

THERE ARE HUNDREDS OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF WARS and you never once thought you would come back from this one. there’s an endless pit inside of me that didn’t exist before you. that, too, is a type of war; me against this nameless hunger for your skin. this is a war I know better than any other. none of them hurt as bad as this specific one. 

IN EVERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO I end up writing this letter. 

IN EVERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO I receive a letter from your father and you never get my last letter. 

IN EVERY POSSIBLE SCENARIO I write you a letter begging you to just stay alive for me and you never get it. 

DEAR JOHN I SAID ADIEU BUT I didn’t mean it that way. I’m taking it back. these days stuck in purgatory. these murky waters. this rotting flesh. the solar systems of our cells. this promise of holding you close to my heart always. I’m taking them back. I’m taking you back. 

there’s a million scenarios where war doesn’t take us by the wrists and drag us into our deaths, where the world is more understanding, where I am allowed to touch your hands, where you find your peace and we both go home. a million scenarios where I’m watching flowers grow from the skin of your knuckles. 

a million beautiful, hopeful scenarios where the light is kind and our bodies are kind and you let me slip into your ribcage and close your ribs like the bars of a prison window to keep me there. ribcage. it’s called that because the heart wants to be free. someone said that. freedom is so subjective. some freedoms are so much larger than others. 

THIS ISN’T A SCENARIO WHERE WE GET a large freedom. instead we get this scenario, and a freedom that means I am free to forgive you, or I’m free to forget you, or I’m free to love you forever. you had a freedom to die. we get an ending where I watch the rain and the rain watches me back. an ending that doesn’t end. an ending that keeps going on. an ending that keeps twisting me into knots.

we get an ending, and a hundred different types of war.


	2. the tragedy of invisible love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter includes: major character death

the boy with the bloody teeth and bruised fingers doesn’t come back from the battle.

instead, he becomes something too heavy to carry. he becomes unsent letters. he becomes the air, thick with burning corn husks. he becomes the crunch of sand under bare feet, the waves carving the rocks into smoother shapes. he becomes the red mud painting the boots of his fellow soldiers. he becomes the first fistful of dirt across his own casket.

six years of comfortable silence and casual touches become an absence of comfort and an overabundance of silence.

it’s a tragedy. war is a tragedy. the lack of control, the lack of soft love, the lack of choice over when to say good things, when to hold each other close is a tragedy. it’s a perpetual state of mourning over soft parts left unexposed, over hardened knuckles and hardened faces and tenderness left unexpressed and unfelt. it’s a cheery song in minor. without the lyrics it’s just noise.

there’s parts in the story, parts that take place in the weeds, that take place in the hidden clearings, in the waterfall slosh and white-hot toned silence, in the sway of the shadows, parts where bones collide and teeth collide and then there’s hands, and they’re always rough, and it’s always guilty, parts of it almost aggressive, almost angry, desperate for anything soft to break and get those hands on, hungry for the release of pent-up love, hungry for something more.

freedom. words have meanings. sometimes the freedoms we get aren’t freedoms at all.

the boy with sharp eyes and a tender heart collects anger while his heart collects dust. it’s hard to love like this. it’s hard to properly verbalize affection that shouldn’t be there when the war drags on and it’s easier to just pretend that rough hands on already bruised skin mean anything more than want.

anything passes as love these days. against the backdrop of death and gore anything with softened angles looks like love. doesn’t even have to be genuine, and even when it is it doesn’t have to be properly voiced. it can be invisible. it’s allowed to exist without a form.

the boy with the ink splatter wrists isn’t invisible. he walks into a gunfire and he doesn’t come back from the battle.

in his head, before he walks into it, he sings -

_oh freedom oh liberty i’m tired of loving like a martyr i want to love like i’m still alive i think i’m burning alive, oh let me love like i’m still alive -_


	3. love as a burden, or as a gift, or a little bit of both

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter includes: imagined self harm, imagined suicide, some pretty heavy internalized homophobia

A boy.

That’s how it starts. Every time it starts with a boy.

He wraps himself around your body like a blanket. He wants you to wrap yourself around him but that just leaves you feeling like a snake. It makes you feel dirty. There’s a fine line between affectionate and over-affectionate and if the line is fine like it is here it’s safer to just not be affectionate at all. Loving too soft or too openly only leaves people hurt. Loving too soft or open leaves everyone dead. Loving a boy leaves you dead, and him dead, and everyone around you dead, so it’s better to just not.

You don’t know what your obsession with ribcages is but you’ve always wanted to see yours. Clean of muscle and skin, you think. You think about taking a knife to your skin and stripping yourself of the barriers, making yourself vulnerable without the protective layers. Bones made wet and red by the gentle throb of something fist sized, something blood-dark. Maybe your heart is an avocado seed. Maybe your heart is a rotten fruit. Maybe your heart just isn’t there.

Let the boy cry himself to sleep. Someone said that. It’s a lyric. It’s a line in a poem. You think about it sometimes. Sometimes the boy is you. Sometimes it’s him. You don’t like it when he cries but maybe it’s better that way. Maybe if he hated you he’d leave you alone. Maybe if you make him cry he’ll understand.

Picture this: the boy with the dark eyes looks into yours or just to the left of them and says they’re the color of shallow water. He says they make him want to learn to walk on water. When he smiles his eyes turn black. He touches his hand to your face and you start shaking. He asks you if you’re okay. Your heart explodes and suddenly there’s sand everywhere.

Picture this: he’s your boy but you don’t want him to be. He’s your boy but you don’t let him call himself that. You’re his, but he isn’t allowed to be yours. You want him to be. You don’t want him to be. You want him safe and he isn’t. You want to touch him but he looks like he’s got liquid gold under his skin. It’s safer if you just don’t. You’re scared he’ll spill over. You’re scared you’ll ruin him.

Picture this: You let him fall into your arms, and he touches your neck, and he puts his lips on your jaw. He’s a statue in your embrace. He’s warm and you want him to overwhelm you. You want him over you, on top of you, you want him to press you into a corner or into a wall or into the door or into a mattress. You want him to cover you completely with his body. You think of him as one of those glass containers, still shiny from the package, and of yourself as the leftovers. You want him more than you want to breathe. You want, you want, you want. You wonder at what point want turns into need.

Picture this -

The water is dark and deep. Your eyes are shallow. Picture yourself falling. Picture yourself resurfacing. There’s sand and water in your lungs and a song stuck in your head. You haven’t heard a happy song in a year. You hum along. The boy with the wrist braces and punched-in eyes smiles at you from the bridge. No, he isn’t smiling. That’s an optical illusion. He’s crying. You close your eyes.

Imagine death. Imagine drowning. But you haven’t drowned and neither has he and you don’t want him to drown but you want him to leave you alone because he deserves better and you don’t want him hurt.

Picture this: he’s your boy. You want him to be, and so does he.

Picture this: you can only say the words “my boy” in that order once in a single stanza, kind of like how you can only touch him once in a single day. Anything more than that is too much, and suffocating, and overwhelming. Anything more than that and you’ll ruin him. Anything more than that just simply won’t do. 

The part in the book where everyone still has faith in each other is over. The part with the hidden clearings and beautiful forests is in the past. We’ve come to the rocks. We’ve come to the predators, getting closer to the part in the story where the hero saves himself and his lover. They go home and then they live together forever after.

That isn’t your story. You know how this ends, don’t you?

You go home alone. He gets tired, eventually. He says he won’t let go but he will. You go home and you sit on your bed and your rotten heart comes apart in your chest. You bring your knees to your chest to keep it inside of your body and pretend to breathe. You think about dying. You picture his eyes looking a little to the left of yours. You picture the water. You picture his wrists. You still want his body on top of yours, want it flush against yours. You want him to take your heart into his hands.

You can’t have any of this. He goes home to his girlfriend. You go home alone.


	4. rewind

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> character death,

so they found out that humans are after all made of stardust. when people die they turn into dirt which turns into rock which turns into stardust.

before the stardust and the rocks and the dirt there’s blood and there’s a body.

rewind -

ending ending ending end the end. definite endings. like where dreams end. the roots of trees. green grass and blue flowers. bloody knees? maybe.

rewind -

that’s not where it should end but it is. that’s where it ends. rewinding only does so much. it’s just running away from what will inevitably be the ending and he already knows how it ends what the ending is when it comes oh god it’s getting near again -

rembobine -

maybe if he says it in a different language this time it’ll stick. maybe if he licks the words out of the mouth of a boy with a clever tongue and ink eyes it will stick. maybe if he rips it out of his chest it will stick. maybe the words will stick. maybe love will be enough. maybe this time he will stick. maybe this time life will stick. maybe this time -

rewind -

he puts his hands on a body that won’t resist. he puts his hands on a boy that doesn’t want to resist. he doesn’t say “this is wrong” but not because he doesn’t believe it but because he doesn’t want to believe it. he’s got three fingers of a hand in his mouth and all five of the other one brushing his hair off his cheeks. he wants to say something smart. he wants to quote the smart men on the topic of stardust and the eternity of the human struggle -

rewind -

falling into a grave is so close to falling into the valleys of hips. rephrase. falling into his grave is so similar to how it feels like to touch another boy like he’s made of silk. it feels like sand in his mouth and a too-fast heartbeat behind his eyes.   
“you know,” says the boy with the swollen wrists and bruised fingers, “i love you so much.”   
and that’s the thing, he thinks, him not knowing. he doesn’t know.

rewind -

he promised to keep him safe in his body, behind his ribs or between his hips or tucked away beneath his brow bone. where to fit a thing that heavy, he wonders, something that large. bigger than himself. he’s going to get himself thrown off-kilter. he’s overbalancing already.

rewind -

fleeting. brief. short-lived. there. he knows all these words. he thinks of life as an onion: makes you cry and not really worth it. the boy in his bed stubbornly calls himself alex and tells him to stop being melodramatic. he says he wants to kiss him and he wants to kiss him back but he doesn’t. he’s peeling oranges. he’s getting that white stuff all over his fingers.

rewind -

sometimes if you listen closely enough you can make out the sound of someone screaming into the wind. sometimes if you listen closely enough you can make out the sound of someone’s heartbeat -

rewind -

lilies. he gets lilies like he’s already dead. they smell bad and he’s dead. the boy with the piano scale fingers cries and he’s dead. the boy with blood in his mouth cries and he’s dead. he means, alexander cries. and he’s dead. lilies on his grave. he sort of likes daffodils. he wants daisies. he doesn’t know what they mean but they’re yellow and white. he likes that.

rewind -

after the boy with the narrow shoulders and black hair tucked behind his ears presses him into the brick-scrape of the wall he stares into his eyes and lets his jaw go slack. he wants to put his own fingers in his mouth. he wants hands, and a mouth. he wants them on his body. he wants apple sauce. he wants forgiveness. he wants original thoughts and something to call his own. he’s got a pretty thing with a pulse less than twelve inches away from him. he looks into his eyes and the boy looks back. he’s saying forever. he’s talking about daisies.

rewind -

please. please let it stick this time.

**Author's Note:**

> tumblr @ laflams twitter @jchnlavrens


End file.
